The un – proportional reporting and focusing of UN decision to upgrade the status of Palestinian state – did not mentioned even once that it is about support of failed organization, controlling half of the population, and on these two organizationa are on their way to establish failed state.
All this “politically correct” terminology and slogans – and not getting in to the real analysis of reasons why the leaders of Palestinian territories (both Hamas and Palestinian Authority) are not interested in the state side by side with Israel but instead of Israel – is so typical to the leftists “intellectuals”.
The distorted blindness of European Left repeats itself from time of Soviet Union as the leader of “progressive forces” and in so many other cases with particular focus on "Palestinian Rights".
All above is so common in European and “liberal press of the Western countries.
In case of Economist – there is additional criteria for comparison.
If similar analysis based on such distorted and biased argumentation would be submitted on Economic or commercial topic - one can be 100% certain, it would never be published in Economist!
On issues related to Israel certain kind of writers getting “free ride” on the pages of Economists…
Such write ups may be popular on Internet – but they deter serious readers.

The Economist:
'Twenty years of international grand-standing from the White House lawns to the UN podium have left Israel’s hold on the West Bank increasingly entrenched with three times more Jewish settlers occupying the territory than when the Oslo process began in 1993.'
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Too bad Oslo Accords were a Palestinian deceit meant to invoke their 10 Point Plan from 1974, which envisioned the establishment of a combatant Palestinian National Authority on any part of Palestine that can be liberated.http://www.un.int/wcm/content/site/palestine/pid/12354
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The PLO realized they can't 'liberate' land by force, so they turned to deceit in Oslo. A combatant National Authority is precisely what Oslo gave the PLO.
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Just imagine how would it be if the Palestinians really meant to stop terror and have peace. If Palestinian terror would stop, rather increase 4+ times more after Oslo, then Rabin and Peres could have demonstrate to the Israeli public how recognizing the PLO brought peace. In that case, Israel's right wing would have been finished.
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But instead of peace, Israel got 4+ more time terror and death. The Palestinians aggression only intensified due to Oslo. So now Israel's left is finished.. and 3 times more settlers there are in the West Bank.
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Can't do the time, don't do the crime. The longer it takes the Palestinians to end their existential aggression against Israel, the less they will remain with.
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End Palestinian aggression - and peace will come!

I watched in the news Meshal giving his speech in Gaza. Behind him was a maquet of a rocket. This is their symbol - nithing else. No growing, building or creating anything, only destruction.
The people were almost as happy as they were dancing in the streets after 9/11.

One has to wonder whether we have forgotten that it is the Christian Palestinians who are in the crossfire & in spite of everything maintain under 242 for us the two most important churches in Christendom, one built by Constantine (Holy Sepulchre) the other (Holy Nativity) key to Christmas & now a World Heritage site, saved for us by Lawrence! So, to find that Israel is now confiscating the tax revenue generated by Christian pilgrims to the Holy Sites is totally abhorent & shall not be tolerated!
Due to this behaviour & the total inability to be a proper Steward of the Holy Land, 181 which created Israel must be rescinded, The UN moved to Jerusalem & the Secretariat to the Settlements & the BIS in Basel take full command of funds flow, monitored by President Carter & Hanan Ashrawi, must confiscate these monies & pay it to the Christian Palestinians. QED

"The ONLY state in the Arab/Muslims Middle East with a GROWING Christian population is in the Jewish State of Israel!"
This is an old hasbara canard. The only reason why the number of Christians in Israel have grown has nothing to do with the "thriving" native Christian Arab community, but rather with the influx of ex-Soviet immigrants, with some remote Jewish ancestry, but actually practicing Christians, as a desperate means to counter the Palestinians' faster demographic growth and to avoid depending on Arab cheap labour.
When Israeli ambassador Michael Oren tried to peddle this propaganda in an article in the Wall Street Journal, eighty prominent Christian Palestinians signed a letter sent to the ambassador last week in response accusing the ambassador of "manipulating the facts."http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/christian-palestinians-israel-manip...

how Christians have FLED … the West Bank … pushed out by MUSLIMS … leaving Bethlehem a MUSLIM TOWN!

how Christians have FLED … Lebanon … fearing their future is bleak

WE SEE YOU … FROY You can't defend the indefensible … THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE … you can't obfuscate

The truth is … that Arab Christians are AFRAID OF THEIR ERODING POSITIONS WITHIN the Arab/Muslim states they live in … If they speak out … they'll be targeted … it's better to be 'still' 'quiet' try not to 'stir the pot' …

In Israel ALL CITIZENS ARE EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW … under the 'rule of law' … NOT SHARIA LAW … NOT THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE! lol

Your attempt to 'wallpaper' over this issue of a RACIST ARAB/MUSLIM ATTITUDE towards their Christian Arabs is defenseless

There are very few Christians among the former Soviet Jews in Israel. They may not be practicing Jews, but that does not make them Christian by a long shot. Something tells me you know that you are lying, but you don't care.

To be even more succinct … anyone willing to 'take on' the mantle of citizen of the Jewish State of Israel … and willing to fight for it and pledge his life to fight for it … is all I need to know about them!

I have a friend in Canada … a Druze born in Israel … who still has shrapnel in his body fighting on behalf of Israel and his brother is a General in the IDF … these are my 'heroes'

It's not me who says it, Iggyexpat, it's the Christian Palestinians themselves who say it. Israeli claims about spectacular Christian population growth are just another hasbara hoax. They just counted some of those Russians, who are not Jewish "by a long shot", as Christian.

The Israeli Public Bureau of Statistics put Russian Christian population at 23,000 in 2010. Unofficial counts make it 80,000, all arrived in the last 20 years:

Of course there is a spectacular growth of the Christian population in Israel! But this has nothing to do with the situation of Arab Christians, who are just as marginalized and discriminated as the rest of Israeli Palestinians.

Yes, Tzatz, Israel has "FASTEST GROWING CHRISTIAN POPULATION in the entire Arab/Muslim Middle East", but that has nothing to do with the "good treatment" Christian Arab Israelis receive from Israel, who are just as discriminated as the rest of Israeli Arabs, just with the fact that a lot of Russian Christians have emigrated to Israel in the last 20 years. 23,000 by Israel's own account in 2010. 80,000 by unofficial accounts.

And that is of course without taking into account the situation in the OPT, where Christian Palestinians have repeatedly stated and denounced that the main reason for their growing exile is Israeli occupation, which not only deprives them of freedom, but also severely curtails their capacity to make a living. A historical Arab Christian city such as Bethlehem has lost 87% of their land to Israeli confiscation, and is now surrounded on all sides by Israeli settlements, mainly between the city and Jerusalem, hindering the flow of tourists upon whom many of the local Christians depended for their business. Israel has built no less than 22 Israeli settlements on Bethlehem’s land, including Gilo, Giv’at Hamatos and Har Homa to the north; Teqoa and Nokdim (where Israeli FM Avigdor Lieberman lives) to the east; Efrata and Navi Daniel (where Israeli Public Diplomacy minister Yuli Edelstein lives) to the south; as well as Har Gilo and Betar Illit to the west, effectively turning Bethlehem into an open air prison.

It's no wonder Palestinian Christians leave for better pastures given the appalling situation. This phenomenon was widely publicized in the US this year in CBS's 60 Minutes, with Christian Palestinians themselves debunking Israel's propaganda:

I saw that CBS 60 Minutes program FROY … the Christian groups advocating that line of 'reasoning' are anti-Israel/anti-Semitic/anti-Zionist …

Arabs IN Israel are aware of their unique position within the Arab/Muslim Middle East …

Those Arab/Christians on the West Bank are in a mighty bad place … having to look both ways … while keeping their head down! Are you kidding me? No wonder they're fleeing the West Bank … it sucks to be a Christian INSIDE a MUSLIM 'STATE' …

Ask the Iraqi Christians that have fled …

Ask the Gaza Christians who must flee or be 'invisible' which is impossible …

No Froy … the bad actors are the Arab/Muslims … ALWAYS pushing their ISLAM ONLY agenda … smiling while they're putting a KNIFE in your back! LITERALLY!

These were not some "Christian groups". The Kairos Palestine document was signed by the leaders of each single one of the Christian denominations in Jerusalem (which represent the faithful on both sides of the Green Line): Orthodox, Catholic, Armenian, Protestant... you name it. They all denounce Israeli occupation, and call for resistance against it.

But of course, if your rants in these forums are any guide, even if YHWH Himself came down from Heaven and told you Israel is wrong, you would still dismiss Him as "anti-Israel/anti-Semitic/anti-Zionist" and for having an "agenda". You're pretty hopeless, I guess.

Let me remind you prof settlen Lawrence first was an imposter and a coward, sucking up in fact on the wrong side of the fence like you... It was the ANZAC Light horse who actually liberated anything in Isreal, Damascus, Beersheeba etc, etc, and on it goes and they did it FOR ISRAEL, FOR THE HEBREWS as they were CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS. Meaning they did not give their blood and lives to liberate that land for the philistines & ex-terrorists who want to get off the hook by playing the soft Christian card...
CHRIST was and still IS an ORTHODOX JEW! meaning anyone who thinks they are Christian with any kind of Christian responsibility MUST LOVE THE JEWS!!! So your so called "christian pilistine" is nothing but more islamic at heart bull poo, together with all your arguments for the same and the usual machinations of the apostate catholic church that leads them to their destruction, also in the west bank. TAX REVENUE is their tithe by the way, by the grace of Judah survive this lot of tree stumps, so Israel must rescind NOTHING! and the UN can toss itself into the fire along with their new gangster friends that are going no where but to hell along with their apostate interfaith churches granting dispensation to be ignorant and evil.
The next point is these holy sites you talk about are all over now, they are nothing but IDOLATRY WHICH IS ACTUALLY ABHORENT! TO THE LORD. If you would actually READ YOUR BIBLE. Todays Spiritually Mature Christian Evangelist who is obliged to actually study the Lords word daily, knows very well that these sites are an abomination to the Lord and must one day be destroyed, they are spiritual filth full of idolatry and trinkets of stone and wood, collecting dust in places of man made traditions that have nothing to do with the Lord, his word nor his holy spirit. This Christmas tree stuff and santa clause is ALOT OF GARBAGE TOO, So is this queen of heaven, idolising the virgin mary garbage too, when we are clearly told by God himself in his BIBLE to pray straight to Jehova by Yeshuas precious blood and sacrifice for us, NOT by the virgin marys labour pains and not by their defiled, filthy and apostate churches, that are surely on their last legs now that their blood and substance has finally grown up and moved on. So must these filthy churches and their unbiblical traditions as it is the LORD NOW WHO IS AGAINST YOU now he is soon to return you have no more excuses. Allow your Hebrew brothers to clean your filfthy houses up and get back to your roots! your shepherds are now to be found in the Messianc churches there and when you do so, settle down, shut up! clean up your act then you may be right to be grafted back in. For right now you have become nothing but dead wood ready for the fire.
"My well-beloved (God) had a vineyard on a fertile hill. And He dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine." The vinedresser chose the finest kind of eastern vine, bearing a bluish–red grape that would produce rich red wine. And He built a tower in the middle of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; then He expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones." Instead of producing rich red quality grapes, it produced wild, harsh, sour, small grapes. The grapes from a good stock have failed to ripen. The vines have produced a harsh flavor. Literally, the word for "worthless ones" means "stinking, rotten grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between Me and My vineyard. What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones? So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard: I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed; I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. And I will lay it waste; it will not be pruned or hoed, but briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain (money) no rain on it." Isaiah 5. Judgment has come to God’s vineyard.

FROY these so called christian groups are false prophets of an apostate church called the whore who will give themselves over to anything to save themselves and their useless positions. They represent a dead and dying church with no future. As they are clearly AGAINST THE LORD, the truth and righteousness, evidenced by the fact that they are clearly against Gods word and contradict everything in the bible against their own ideas and stupidities, ignorant and apostate. And what's worse in their GREAT DELUSION they think people are mad like them.

Thank God and praise Yeshua we can read and study the bible for ourselves and have the freedom to honestly live honestly by it in both SPIRIT AND TRUTH.

I will remind everyone please CHRIST WAS AN ORTHODOX JEW, (JUDAH), EVANGELIST!

“Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on any inch of the land.” The NYTimes reports him as saying that all Palestinian refugees and their descendants would one day return to their original homes in what is now Israel.

It is exactly the same what Israel says and does in so far as Jews are concerned. The west has no objections. But when Hamas repeats the same paradigm, the west objects.
Israel as a state was created by force. Welcomed by the west. When Hamas follows the same paradigm, the west objects.

I am in favour of peace and justice both for Jews and Palestinians. Both Jews and Palestinians are entitled to their homeland.

Israel is a state created by a UN resolution.
The resolution was not accepted by the Arab world, which attacked Israel.
Israel fought back and won territory.
If Israel cannot build on that territory, I suggest that Russia must stop building in Kaliningrad (was once Germany), France stop building in Strasbourg, and Slovakia stop building anything (was completely part of Hungary).

They actually owned about 78% of the land and got not that much less allocated to them in the partition plan - though it was less. The population of Palestine is actually harder to figure given that the Jewish numbers were increasing rapidly and, frankly, the data is all over the place. Using the figures from 1948 before the war, so before the Arabs were displaced, a good guess is that Arabs were about 65% (counting Christian and Muslim Arabs) with Jews about 35% and the population having shifted more toward Jews over the years.

But of course the point is not what happened in 1948 but what has happened since. If the Palestinians still want to fight the war of 1948, as they clearly do, then there is zero chance for peace other than military victory that destroys Israel.

To quote Khaled Meshal speaking in Gaza today:

“Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on any inch of the land.” The NYTimes reports him as saying that all Palestinian refugees and their descendants would one day return to their original homes in what is now Israel.

“We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation, and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take,” he said. “We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone. Israel has no right to be in Jerusalem.”

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As I noted, you are free to believe this is good. You are free to want Arab victory. But don't claim this you believe in peace. Because you don't.

This surprisingly accurate rendition of reality (surprising for a European publication, that is) shows how out-of-touch the so-called "international community" is with the facts on the ground in the Middle East. They invent and support fabricated PR displays showcasing their corrupt little PLO stage actor - now Mr. Abbas, once Mr. Arafat. Israel grows and becomes stronger and stronger. The Arab states surrounding Israel move toward civil war and disintegration. This is the real news.

Yet, what is the Euro-global media focused on? Yet another publicity stunt by the PLO? Have they learned nothing in the last 50 years? Clearly, the Palestinians in the West Bank who ignore Mr. Abbas understand a reality that the Euro-world and its acolytes have not yet grasped.

Ellen S
International community is NOT out of touch; it has never been. Support for the Palestinian cause from international community has always been overwhelming with the exception of the West.
The word international community has been hijacked by western politics and media as a propaganda tool; this CD is being played by the west for far too long; successfully fooling and brain washing its own people.
West is not international community, it is a small part of it. In international affairs, justice and rule of law takes the back seat; there is just one paradigm; 'might is right'.

O contraire. You are sadly misinformed yourself. The ridiculous term, "international community" is simply an invention of the same people who waste US taxpayer money with the UN charade on the East River. The UN and the so-called international community represent absolutely nobody but a collection of despotic, unrepresentative regimes, mostly in the developing world. These regimes - some of whom are now being toppled in the Arab world - represent the cynical interests of powerhungry, greedy cliques who themselves represent a thin sliver of their own societies.

The Europeans and Arabs have created the term "international community" and they are the ones who keep the UN running too, because it serves their anti-American and anti-Israeli interests. No matter, theater is still only an act, at the end of the day, and justice will prevail through those who actually execute power. And, as we can see in the performance of the so-called international community in Syria, these people are very nearly irrelevant to the facts on the ground.

The Palestinians have been plagued by poor leadership since the 1930s, when their Mufty (religious leader) in Jerusalem Haj Amin Al Husseini visited Berlin and befriended Adolf Hitler.
Later, in 1947, the Arabs of Palestine rejected the UN resolution dividing the country between its Jewish and Arab communities, a decision that was welcomed by the Jewish community.
In the 60s, 70s and 80s, Palestinians became the strongest allies of USSR in the Middle East.
Fast forward to the previous decade, when Yasser Arafat rejected a peace agreement brokered by then US president Bill Clinton, and accepted by Israel.
These days, Palestinians are ruled by an incapable and corrupt Fatah party in the West bank, and a terror organization named Hamas in Gaza.
Worst of all - most Palestinians seem to believe that "International Pressure" combined with ineffective terror activities against Israeli civilians would yield any results.
There seem to be little tendency towards Real-Politik among Palestinians, and a great deal of rhetoric and complacency, and that's too bad.

Palestinians owned 90% of the land and constituted 75% of the population when the UN alloted 55% of the land to Israel in 1947. Of course the Palestinians rejected the UN's verdict. This is not ancient history, yet these basic facts are ignored when examining the current state of affairs.

If it's true that Jews have been fooling around with the Nazis then all they're doing is imitate what the Arabs living in Palestine did at the time of the British Mandate. (In those days it was the Jewish immigrants who were called "the Palestinians".) The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was an ally of the Third Reich. Also, during the three uprisings that were organized in order to force the Redcoats to allow no more Jewish immigrants many Jews were murdered. This hostility, at a time when Europe was exterminating their (racially watered down) Semitic brethren, was a mistake that they will have to keep regretting forevermore, it seems, because that's what started the problem going. If they had shown some compassion, as encouraged in the teachings of "The Merciful, The Compassionate", and given refuge to the desperate masses, they would've been swept into the modern world by their now abler brothers, who had been gathering the knowledge and wisdom from all over the world for 2,000 years and would've discharged a debt incurred with the Muslims in the Middle Ages, when Jews thrived in the Caliphates.

N.B. Despite my given name, I don't follow any of the three Abrahamic faiths, whose theology is rather monstrous.

The day after the UN vote the Israeli paper Haaretz ran a piece from Gaza in which the writer said he wasn't celebrating because he couldn't go back to his village, which is inside Israel. That is the problem and that is why there is no peace. The writer also said he longs for the day when all these people can live in peace but to get there he would require Israel to go away, to hand over the land that people owned back in 1948 and then exist in some form on whatever is left. That is the Hamas definition of peace. It's the essential Palestinian position: 1967 borders and a "full right of return" means literally handing over the land from 1948.

You're free to believe that's the right solution. But of course there is no way Israel would agree to that. This is also what the US and Europe and other nations mean when they say they "guarantee" Israel's right to exist: no return to 1948, just to 1967. This is the hidden meaning in the much-vaunted Saudi Initiative because it requires a "just" solution and that is longterm code for returning to 1948 and starting all over again.

I happen to be wholly in favor of a Palestinian state. I see that as the only way to end this conflict. But to do that would require extinguishing the rights of the Palestinian state to claim land within the state of Israel and the Palestinians won't agree to that. In fact, Hamas only grudgingly gave support to this UN vote because they made clear the PA wouldn't give up their rights, meaning their claims to the land inside Israel's 1967 borders.

This is the entire problem. If the world decided the Palestinian claims were no good - which the Arab states won't do and the states that require oil thus won't do - then Israeli settlement activity would fall apart in a day. It would have no leg to stand on within Israel, where it is enabled by the blunt knowledge that the Arabs won't change and won't agree no matter what. The settlements would go and there would be two countries based around the 1967 borders with some border adjustments as has been nearly agreed to a dozen times.

But it won't happen. Period. It won't because the Arabs and the Palestinians can't give up the past. They will not agree to look forward but insist on starting over from 1948. I've even seen recent discussion about going back to the UN partition plan in which Israel is a tiny part of the 1967 area.

I can point out that millions of people have lost their homes all over the world. The largest forced migration in history may be the Germans driven out of Prussia and E.Europe in the exact same years as when Israel was founded. Germans can go visit their ancestral homes. Serbs no longer live in Kosovo. Croatia drove out substantial numbers of Muslims and Serbs. This is just Europe. Around the world there has been more. And yet only the Palestinians remain as a special recognized class of "permanent refugees." Only them.

The "permanent refugee" status means countries like Lebanon and Syria - particularly the former - have treated Palestinians as non-people, denying them basic rights. Palestinians born 3 generations in Lebanon are not allowed to be citizens. Only a year or so ago did Lebanon pass a law allowing Palestinians to apply for work permits ... as foreigners. They can't own property.

Want to know the role of the US in funding terror? We pay a substantial part of the cost of UNRWA, the permanent group that provides housing, education, medical care and food to Palestinians. UNRWA is itself not a terrorist group but its existence means Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the others don't have to care about having an economy, about educating people and caring for them. We do much of that so they can concentrate on bringing in weapons and training people to kill and die. We free up the terrorist resources. (We also contribute to the high birthrate which furthers the conflict because we provide the support for families that otherwise wouldn't have children they couldn't afford.)

The choice has been and always will be 1948 versus the future. So there isn't much to celebrate.

Can you put a name to this? It's called HYPOCRISY …
The Arab/Muslim World are the hypocrites … the major Population Transfers that have occurred in THIS CENTURY … have MOSTLY INVOLVED MUSLIMS AND 'THE OTHER' …
India/Pakistan … MILLIONS TRADING STATES with 500K MURDERED/KILLED
Greece/Turkey … 2 MILLION TRADING STATES
There was an INADVERTENT POPULATION TRANSER WITHIN THE ARAB/MUSIM MIDDLE EAST AS WELL …
750K ARAB OUT OF ISRAEL
750K JEWS OUT OF MOROCCO, ALGERIA, TUNISIA, LIBYA, EGYPT, YEMEN, IRAQ, SYRIA, IRAN, LEBANON et al
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_3A6_qSBBQ

As long as the Palestinians celebrate more for firing rockets at Israel than they do for building their own state, there's not much hope for Palestine, regardless of whether they're under Fatah or under Hamas.